I’ve never been much of an artist, but going into the book publishing industry, I knew I would need to get comfortable with learning how to get creative and using different design tools and programs. I like to try my hand at everything, so when the opportunity arose to design a small graphic for social media, I took the opportunity. It’s important to be well-rounded in the industry, so—through trial and error—I have gained knowledge that has helped me become a designer when I have never been one before! Through my few short months of being at Ooligan Press, I have learned some tips and tricks that have helped me become a better designer. Some of these may seem obvious but they work!
Number one is finding inspiration. I looked through Ooligan’s Instagram and other social media and saw how previous designers laid out their graphics. Instagram had lots of great examples, just looking through different publishers’ pages really gave me a feel for what I should be doing. For me, I looked at other socials as a sort of base template and grew from there. Never plagiarize someone else’s work; if you see something you like, just take a few elements and add them to your own design to make it distinguishable from others.
Number two: less is more. I’m sure if I was an actual artist more might look better, but when you’re a beginner like me, with not a ton of confidence in your ability to create, less will always be better. I often found myself trying to add too many elements in a design, whether it was too many different colors or images. I learned to always just take a couple elements away if it felt too busy. This will also make it easier for cohesion between posts because you’ll be able to use the same elements multiple times differently. Something I also found helped me a lot was taking a step away for a few hours to come back with fresh eyes. I almost always change things around when I do this.
Number three is simple, but just get creative and play around with different designs. Even if they turn out terrible, you still learned what does not work for a design. There are a number of different design programs that are common; InDesign, Canva, and Adobe Creative are a few of the popular and user-friendly programs for designing.
Designing when you have not designed before is hard. So making a design that is simple and can be understood is key. The design doesn’t have to be so overboard or too crazy. It just needs to get the message you are trying to communicate across. Finding some inspiration and playing around with different design programs will help so much with the process. So get creative and have fun; that’s what art and designing are all about.
Written by Carlie Reese.